Hello,

I hope this email finds you safe and well. We certainly are living in challenging times with many changes to the way we do things. The board of the Utah Society for Social Work Leadership in Health Care (USSWLHC) wants to let you know of changes to the organization and some important scheduling updates.

You may not be aware that USSWLHC is the state chapter of a national organization – Society for Social Work Leadership in Health Care (SSWLHC). The national organization, in an attempt to restructure, recently proposed major changes that we felt, would adversely impact Utah membership by requiring fee increases possibly as much as 300%. Due to our Utah chapter desire to maintain cost effective CEU opportunities for all Utah social workers  and our focus on support to SW across all care delivery sites, not just healthcare, the USSWLHC made the decision to disaffiliate with the SSWLHC and form our own social work organization.

We are now known as, “Utah Social Work Association” or UTAHSWA. You can reach us at our new website, www.utahswa.org, and contact us at contact@utahswa.org. Our yearly membership cost will remain the same, and we plan to continue offering an annual conference, half-day conferences and lunch and learns.

This may not come as a big surprise, with so many unknowns due to COVID19, we have made the difficult decision to cancel our August 13, 2020 conference. We have re-scheduled our conference for August 12, 2021 so please mark your calendar.

In addition to the annual conference, all in-person half-day conferences and lunch and learns are also canceled for the remainder of 2020.  We will send out announcements of CEU online events that are no or low cost and do all we can to help you still get CEUs for licensing renewal.

For members who are current on their membership, please know your membership carries over to UTAHSWA. Given many of us renewed membership at our 2019 conference, we are committing to keep all memberships until our 2021 conference. Each member with a recent membership will receive an email as confirmation of the membership extension.

Thank you for your continued participation in and support of our Utah social work association. We are committed to your educational and networking needs and look forward to the day when we can come together and celebrate the amazing support SWs across the state are providing during this crisis.

Warm Regards,

2020 Executive Board

Utah Social Work Association

Contact Us: contact@utahswa.org